Topic of CEO conversation: The weather

The weather is always a popular topic in discussions of retail performance, but it seems this recent quarter has produced a storm of exceptionally intense meteorological commentary.

The following are just some of the examples of CEOs talking about the weather taken from news reports of the past several days:

• "For the second quarter in a row, very poor weather conditions, especially in April and May, and fragile consumer confidence significantly impacted our quarterly results," said Robert Dutton, president and CEO of RONA. 

• "The challenges we saw from weather this year are unparalleled during my life-long tenure in this industry," said Jim Hagedorn, chairman and CEO of Scotts Miracle-Gro.

• "The continued significant escalation in raw material input costs, together with extreme weather conditions that suppressed our chemical and controls business and altered our product mix, negatively impacted our gross margin and bottom-line results," said Bill Brown, chairman and CEO of Central Garden & Pet.

• "We are very pleased with our solid performance during the second quarter despite unfavorable weather conditions in April and May,” said Ray Griffith, Ace president and CEO.

• "As previously announced, second-quarter sales were less than expected due to poor weather in much of the country and, to a lesser extent, the challenging macroeconomic environment," said Ronald Kaplan, Trex chairman, president and CEO.

Home Depot and Lowe's are due to report second-quarter earnings next week. There is a high probability that the topic of weather will cast a shadow over the discussions.